North Florida Broadband Authority - Broadband Strategic & Financial Planning
Magellan Advisors recently completed a region-wide market, demand and rate study for the North Florida Broadband Authority, recipient of a $30 million dollar NTIA BTOP Round 2 grant. The Rate Study Project focused on development of sustainable rates for its portfolio of services, based on comprehensive market demand planning, research, modeling and financial analysis. Key to this study was the development of a granular forecast model, which identified the uptake of services from the NFBA's many customer segments. Over the 9,100 square mile region, Magellan was able to model customer demand and uptake to provide a concise capacity forecast to the NFBA for its services. This tool gave the NFBA the unique ability to understand demand at the smallest geographic site level as well as aggregated demand at City, County and multiple County levels. It also provided a valuable resource for the NFBA's key business functions, including capacity planning, engineering, sales, marketing and customer outreach.
A comprehensive financial plan was developed to enable the NFBA to understand financial sustainability based on the demand forecast presented in the first phase of the project, utilizing the Burton & Associates FAMS-XL Model. This financial plan incorporated all revenues, costs, capital needs and future funding sources into a dynamic model that allowed the NFBA to run sensitivity analysis on different scenarios in its business and make informed management decisions. In addition, the model allowed the NFBA to understand financial sustainability for its organization, through an analysis of profitability, capital expansion, debt coverage and other financial metrics. As a NTIA grant recipient, demonstrating financial sustainability was key to compliance with federal regulations around the BTOP program.
Magellan has provided many rate and market studies for broadband providers, local governments and utilities, domestically and internationally. For broadband grant recipients, these models allow organizations building both last-mile and middle-mile networks to accurately forecast and meet the requirements of their service areas, enabling them to get to market more quickly, understand their customers and meet large demand requirements from unserved and underserved regions. In addition, Magellan's rate and market studies are critical planning tools to demonstrate financial sustainability of grant-funded projects.
A copy of the final report can be found by clicking here.
About the North Florida Broadband Authority
The Ubiquitous Middle Mile project plans to bring high-speed broadband services to underserved areas in 14 North Central Florida counties through the deployment of a 1,200-mile fixed wireless broadband network which will enhance economic development, education, and public services throughout the region. The network plans to directly connect more than 300 community anchor institutions at speeds of 10 Mbps to 1 Gbps. These anchor institutions include public schools, universities, libraries, healthcare facilities, public safety organizations, and government agencies.. The project, which was jointly created by the area’s local governments, will utilize 128 existing wireless towers and sites, and is designed to withstand the weather hazards endemic to the region.